Illustration by Lloyd DangleDr. Bernard Rappaport
Inducted 1998. The first inductee into the Hall, Rappaport was head of the county's Children and Youth Services (CYS), where—among other things—he ignored complaints concerning at least one psychiatrist who gave young patients at the Orangewood Children's Home potentially dangerous drug combinations, illegal office drinking parties at one CYS clinic, a supervising psychiatrist who allegedly made dangerous misdiagnoses, and an Orange County grand jury that described him as “unaccountable.” He still works for the county mental-health department.
Gloria Matta Tuchman
Inducted 1999. The terrifying Mexican-American schoolteacher co-authored with Ron Unz the troglodytic “Save Our Children” initiative—the one that gives Latino kids in our state one whole year to learn English before being thrust into an English-only classroom setting. Proving that narrowness begins at home, she proudly told a local magazine that her own kids had to learn Spanish in high school classes—because she never taught it to them at home. She's now trailing far behind incumbent Democrat Loretta Sanchez in the race for the heavily Latino 46th Congressional District, once occupied by Hall of Fame benefactor Robert K. Dornan.
Jim Silva
Inducted 2000. You'd never know 2nd District Supervisor Silva was an ex-high school civics teacher by the way county staff lead him around each week's Board of Supervisors meeting. But Silva knows what he wants: a 30-year extension of the Boy Scouts' lease on the Newport Beach Sea Base (“It's expensive to be a gymnast,” was how Silva explained his vote), a plan to use all tobacco-settlement money for debt reduction instead of health care and Jan Mittermeier as county executive officer. And what he doesn't want is equally clear: television broadcasting of board meetings, anyone living in the immaculately kept housing units at the old El Toro base, or a citizen-backed ballot initiative mandating that 60 percent of tobacco-settlement money go to health care.
